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|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

SnapBizz, a retail-technology firm, has raised $7.2 million led by Jungle Ventures, Taurus Value creation, Konly Venture and Blume Ventures. The funds raised will be used to continue the firm’s rapid growth and spur market expansion across key cities. The company had earlier received a seed fund of $1.7 million from Qualcomm, Jungle Ventures, National Research Foundation of Singapore, Taurus Value creation and Blume Ventures

SnapBizz is already transforming thousands of traditional retail outlets in Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad via a technology solution addressing the key business challenges faced by them. SnapBizz also connects and provides immense value to all stakeholders of the fragmented retail ecosystem of India.

The cost-effective, end-to-end solution is an Android-based, cloud-connected business platform. The solution comprises a tablet, barcode scanner, printer and an intelligent consumer-facing LED display for consumer engagement.

Prem Kumar, Founder and CEO, SnapBizz said

We are thrilled that all ecosystem players have shown confidence in our solution and that our existing investors have reiterated their support to us. Large retail and online players account for only 10-15% of any brand’s business. The remaining 90% happens through traditional trade and there is zero or minimal last mile connectivity between brands, consumers and retailers. We are on a mission to address this big gap while addressing the pain points of the kirana stores.

David Gowdey, Managing Partner, Jungle Ventures said

We are convinced with the SnapBizz business model, which brings a tailored technology solution to kirana stores and believe that it will play a large role in India’s retail growth story. Prem and team have a rich and diverse experience across multiple markets and verticals that has led to their impressive growth over a short span of time.  We are confident that this momentum will continue as more kirana stores look to leverage technology to improve their business.

SnapBizz empowers retailers by delivering a competitive edge through leveraging their strengths to achieve improved profitability. SnapBizz also drives digital inclusion of a large part of the economy and provides the much needed last mile connect in keeping with the national agenda of Digital India.

Chirantan Bhabhra, Director- Brands Engagement, SnapBizz added

SnapBizz is bringing in more money to kirana stores through partnership with FMCG companies. Brands, large and small, find SnapBizz a must-be-on platform. They can now contextually engage consumers in and out of stores, track promotions efficiently, analyse their business like never before and connect directly with kirana retailers.

Prem Kumar, Founder and CEO, SnapBizz added

Kirana stores have been the face of India’s retail ecosystem for ages. The last few years witnessed the entry of large players in the form of supermarkets, hypermarkets and e-commerce posing a huge threat to kirana stores’ business. Despite stiff competition, kirana stores are still considered as the most trusted retail format in our country.

They have unique strengths like trust, convenience, flexibility and competitive pricing which make them highly relevant. SnapBizz helps kirana stores leverage these strengths to get a competitive edge. In line with the changing business environment and consumer expectations, kirana stores have realized the need to transform the business through advanced technology solutions

About SnapBizz

SnapBizz Cloudtech Pvt Ltd is a retail-technology company founded in 2013 to transform the small scale retail sector in the country. To reverse marginalization of SMB’s and drive digital inclusion in the large consumer goods industry, it has developed a technology platform to connect all stakeholders of the fragmented retail ecosystem of India, while adding value to individual stakeholders.

The end-to-end solution it offers is an android based, cloud-connected business platform that is also cost-effective. The solution comprises of tablet, barcode scanner, printer and an intelligent external large consumer facing LED display for consumer engagement. SnapBizz is backed by leading investors and strategic partners who are captains of industry and bring in an innovation funnel of cutting edge technology.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Hike Messenger, India’s only home-grown and fastest growing messaging app, crossed the 100 million user mark in just 3 months after crossing 70 million users in October 2015. Also, Hike is now logging a monthly messaging volume of 40 billion messages, having doubled on messaging in a span of 5 months [from 20 billion messages per month logged in August 2015]. Users are spending over 120 minutes per week on Hike.

Apart from messaging, there’s a lot more one can do on Hike as it emerges a platform. For example, users are viewing 11.2 News stories on average per user per day & since the launch of Hike Direct in October 2015, have transferred close to 10 million files totalling to more than 200 TB of data till date without the internet.

Kavin Bharti Mittal, CEO & Founder, Hike Messenger said

We’re off to a great start in 2016. Crossing 100 million users is a big milestone for us and we have achieved this well ahead of our expectations. Hikers aren’t only messaging and calling on Hike, they’re also reading News on Hike in Hindi and English, viewing live Cricket scores, getting inspired on Hike Daily, transferring huge files without internet on Hike Direct and so on. Hike has emerged as a true platform over the last year and in 2016 we’re going to double down.

90% of Hike users are under the age of 30 and 90% of them are based in India; and this is the mobile-first young-India that Hike is building for. Hike has a localized strategy for the country and continues to reach this young user base that consumes enormous amounts of byte-sized information, craves social interactions, shares like never before and survives on many challenges such as poor connectivity and limited data.

Hike’s Growth Story

  • Dec 2012 – Global launch
  • Feb 2013 – Messaging traffic grows 10X week on week
  • April 2013 – Hit the first 5M user milestone in just 4 months of its launch | Raised $7M from BSB
  • Feb 2014 – Hit the 15M user mark
  • April 2014 – Received $14M fresh funding from BSB
  • June 2014 – Crossed 20M user mark, launched first TVC
  • July 2014 – Hit #1 rank on App stores
  • August 2014 – Crossed 35M user mark, receives $65M fresh funding led by Tiger Global & BSB
  • November 2014 – Launches regional stickers on hike
  • January 2015 – Launched free Hike Calls
  • February 2015 – Launched Cricket Scores on hike
  • Aug 2015: Hike announces 20 billion messages per month and launched Hike News
  • Sep 2015: Launched Group Calling with upto 100 people

Additional information

You can download the app at – http://get.hike.in For more information, please visit the Hike Blog

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

FreeCharge, in its endeavour to make transactions ubiquitous, secure and rewarding for the customers has launched its new virtual card ‘FreeCharge Go‘. FreeCharge Go is linked with FreeCharge wallet and will make the wallet universally accepted across all online merchants in India. FreeCharge will soon be available for payments at offline stores as well in coming months.

Launched in association with YES Bank, ‘FreeCharge Go’ is powered by MasterCard. The card can be activated in just a few seconds. Customers can log on to the FreeCharge account and generate their FreeCharge Go card. They can top it up by adding money to FreeCharge wallet and use it on- the- go for all their online transactions.

Govind Rajan, Chief Operating Officer, FreeCharge said

FreeCharge Wallet is the fastest growing wallet in the country. We are insanely focused on UI – 0ver 99% of our transactions are completed in less than 10 seconds. As a result we have amongst the stickiest cohort – with over 72% consumers being repeat consumers

Today, in our journey we are entering the next phase. We are partnering with MasterCard and YES Bank to launch the FreeCharge Go card. FreeCharge Go card can be generated by the consumer in less than 5 seconds! Also, the card will be accepted universally across all major online portals in India. Transacting online will not only be swifter and safer with “FreeCharge Go” but universal too.

Porush Singh, Country Corporate Officer, India and Division President, South Asia, MasterCard said

In India, digital wallets are emerging as the new trend among consumers in tandem with smartphone adoption and rise in the number of internet users. Consumers are fascinated with the digital wallet as its use has been expanded beyond paying bills and it is a hassle-free way to make payments from anywhere.

The potential of digital wallets is promising as it has simplified the online payment process. FreeCharge and MasterCard pursue a shared dream of driving the country towards a digital future. Our partnership with ‘FreeCharge Go’ will provide a full spectrum of merchant services on a safe and secure payment platform to consumers and we are certain such innovative solutions will be accepted enthusiastically by consumers.

FreeCharge Go is built to ensure the safety and security of customer data. FreeCharge has deployed state of the art technology wherein data is secured with 128-bit encryption and stored as per PCI DSS compliance. Post activation, FreeCharge users will be able to see a 16 digit MasterCard number with an associated CVV in their FreeCharge account.

The card details are only accessible after entering security MPIN every time the customer has to view the card details to protect customer information. In addition, every transaction using the card needs to be verified by an OTP which is sent to the registered mobile number. With ‘FreeCharge Go’ customers can transact across all major e-commerce portals, pay for movie tickets, book event tickets, pay for various transportation services like bus, cabs and metro rides, leverage it for hyper-local services like grocery shopping etc. across all Indian websites.

With the aim to be the most rewarding wallet, ‘FreeCharge Go’ will soon launch a marketing program with targeted and personalized offers for customers based on their usage patterns.

About FreeCharge

FreeCharge is India’s leading digital platform for recharge and utility payments which provides prepaid, post-paid, DTH and Electricity bill payment for almost all Indian service providers. FreeCharge was founded in 2010 by Kunal Shah & Sandeep Tandon and had received funding of over $120 million in the last 4 years. In the largest acquisition in the consumer Internet space yet, Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge in Apr’15 resulting in India’s largest m-commerce ecosystem.  For more details, please visit FreeCharge

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Goans can now make their homes more beautiful with the best in class furniture, home decor products and service offerings from Urban Ladder. The company has expanded its presence and launched services in Goa from January. Urban Ladder’s vision is to make a million homes beautiful. It has consistently strived to ensure customer delight with a dedicated, well-trained delivery and assembly team. This delivery centre in Goa will be instrumental in ensuring exceptional service quality to consumers in the city.

Goa has the highest per capita GDP, of Rs. 2.24 lacs, in India, which is three times India’s average of Rs. 0.74 lacs, making it an attractive market. Urban Ladder has seen a lot of demand from Goa, particularly from customers furnishing their second homes.  The average ticket size of Goa customers is three times higher than the average ticket size of other Urban Ladder customers.

Speaking on the occasion, Kaustabh Chakraborty, VP Operations and Customer Service, Urban Ladder said

Even prior to the launch, Goa has been an active market with special delivery requests from several loyal Urban Ladder customers. The aesthetic sense of people in Goa is closely aligned to what we offer, making the market even more promising. We look forward to Goa being among the top 7 cities for us in the coming months, contributing significantly to our overall growth.

From early consumer trends of the cities, there is high demand for sofas followed by solid wood dining sets, coffee tables and crockery units. The other potential categories will be bar units, lounge and balcony furniture. There has been exponential growth in demand for online shopping, and furniture is the third largest segment in e-commerce, after electronics and apparel. Urban Ladder has been at the forefront in delivering superior quality furniture to cater to this growing segment.

Urban Ladder is currently available across 19 cities in India and this number is expected to grow soon.

|In: acquisition|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Bengaluru-based conversational m-commerce start-up, Goodbox has acquired SmartPocket for an undisclosed amount. SmartPocket started out as a mobile app that allowed customers to digitize their loyalty cards. They were working towards making SmartPocket the online wallet for customers to make online payments, place orders with offline partners as well as store all their virtual cards in one place.

SmartPocket was co-founded by Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah. They will be joining the leadership team at Goodbox post acquisition. Goodbox enables small businesses to become e-commerce ready, on the Goodbox app, within minutes by providing seamless discovery, ordering and payment. Consumers can buy directly, over messaging, from their trusted stores across multiple categories without having to download multiple apps.

Abey Zachariah, CEO & Co-founder of Goodbox said

The SmartPocket team is very talented and tenacious. During our discussions with them, we realized we share a similar vision and it made sense to join forces to empower millions of SMEs to come online. We are building very strong mobile capabilities and this is a step towards that objective. We are very excited to be building Goodbox along with them.

Kiran Shastri, CEO & Co-founder of SmartPocket said

We are excited about joining the team at Goodbox. We have a shared vision and now a shared goal. At Smartpocket, we wanted to create a marketplace with a focus on repeat business and customer loyalty through a digital wallet. We will now look to bring that mindset, technology and expertise with us into Goodbox. There is a clear need among businesses for a platform that enables them to sell on mobile and Goodbox is catering to that need -while it creates one of the largest consumer platforms that enables them to buy directly from their trusted businesses on a single app.

Goodbox had recently announced its Series A funding of $2.5 million from Nexus Venture Partners.

About Goodbox

Goodbox gives an app presence to businesses. It enables a business to create a storefront on the Goodbox app. Businesses want to adopt new technologies such as being on app, having a storefront and being able to interact with their consumers real-time. However, creating or maintaining an app is a very costly and complex affair. Goodbox enables SME businesses with an app presence within 5 minutes at an unbelievably low price, along with a payment gateway. Businesses can host their menu on the app and create their business profile as well. Every business can now be on the Goodbox app and start conducting commerce with their consumers. Goodbox app for Android can be downloaded from here

[Image Credit* – IndiaWeb2]

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Altimetrik, a business transformation and technology solutions company, part of the $100 million Vattikuti ventures, partners with HackerEarth to host the world’s largest  developer confluence, IndiaHacks 2016. Through this partnership Altimetrik aims to hire close to 50 design engineers as part of their expansion plans for the year 2016.

Altimetrik as a company is heavily invested in and at the epicenter of powering the next wave of business transformation through its new methodology that is based on the fundamentals of Design-Thinking and Design-led Engineering. It is this outlook that led Altimetrik to sponsor HackerEarth’s IndiaHacks 2016 which is predicted to draw over 1,00,000 programmers from across the globe to celebrate the spirit of coding.

As a transformational company that believes in nurturing young talent, Altimetrik through IndiaHacks aims at encouraging programmers and coders to transform themselves into Design Engineers by bringing out their best and rewarding the top 50 hackers. Altimetrik is enthusiastic to take a step further and open its doors with offer letters to the outstanding coders who participate at IndiaHacks.

Commenting on the same, Asha Poluru, Chief -People Experience (HR),  Altimetrik said

Gone are the days where we hire looking at resumes. The future of any company is in finding the right talent and the only way towards identifying this, is through events such as these. We at Altimetrik have made it a practice to hire through Hackathons and Ideathons.

And thus, this synergy with IndiaHacks is only organic to our hiring culture that gauges talent against the best in the industry. IndiaHacks has already seen over 1,00,000 registrations from across the globe, and we’d like to make spot-offers to at least 150 of the top coders from this Hackathon. The team at Altimetrik is looking forward to a fresh batch of ‘Design Engineers’ from this hackathon.

Sachin Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder, HackerEarth said

The Indian developer ecosystem has matured over the past decade. We are witnessing some top class tech innovations coming out of India, and a slow movement from services to product development – and all of this requires world-class developers. IndiaHacks 2016 is an ode to such developers and also a platform to encourage programming.

We are excited to partner with Altimetrik and are extremely happy that they have chosen to engage with the developer community via IndiaHacks. This will help the HackerEarth developer community to grow bigger and stronger.

IndiaHacks 2016 comprises of two levels of programming contests comprise of three programming tracks – Advanced Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning & Big Data. These hackathons will see developers build unique and interesting products based on themes in a duration of 48 hours.

Hacks will be evaluated on criteria like uniqueness of the idea, usability of the hack, code quality, design etc. The second phase of IndiaHacks is an offline developer conference. Top 20 teams/individuals will be shortlisted from each track and will be invited to this conference, where they will again hack for 24 hours and present their ideas to a panel of judges. The top winners of IndiaHacks win the opportunity meet technology companies in San Francisco.

About Altimetrik

Altimetrik is a business transformation and technology solutions partner to global enterprise customers covering three global mega trends of modernization – Digital, Connected Solutions & Consumer Technologies. Additional information can be found at Altimetrik or connect with Altimetrik on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Flipkart continues its dominance of mobile commerce in India with 47% of share of visits among the major shopping apps in India, according to December 2015 data by analytics firm SimilarWeb. Myntra occupies the second position with over 16% share of visits. The combined traffic share of Flipkart and Myntra stands at an overwhelming 63%. Amazon stands at the third position with 15.86% followed by Snapdeal with 13.84%.

Flipkart also leads in total app installs with an install base of 37% of the total Android smartphone base in the country. Combined with Myntra, the total install base goes up to 47% of the total Android smartphones in India. Amazon and Snapdeal are at less than half of Flipkart’s install base with 18% each. Android smartphones account for around 85% market share of total smartphones in the country.

The Indian e-tail market is overwhelmingly mobile dominated with around 70% percent traffic coming from mobile devices. Desktop contributes to only around 30% of the total traffic, a share that has been declining rapidly.

Smartphone sales and usage in India have soared in 2015. According to IDC, smartphone shipments grew by 44% in quarter two and by over 21% in quarter three of 2015. At the same time, 4G phones also saw a three-fold jump in demand. The total smartphone ownership in India stands at over 160 million. According to IDC, India is set to overtake the United States as the second largest smartphone market in the world by 2017.

On the other hand, PC shipments have seen a precipitous fall. According to IDC, world PC shipments have suffered a year-on-year decline of minus 10.6%. This is the largest decline in history for PC shipments. The Indian PC market is also declining rapidly with MAIT reporting a fall of over 10% in July 2015.

Note – The visit share has been computed by comparing visits among top shopping apps – Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon, Snapdeal, Jabong and Shopclues, as reported by SimilarWeb for December 2015.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Mindtree, a leading digital transformation and technology services company have announced the launch of its Flooresense platform to increase in store conversions for retailers. The solution will enable retailers to enhance customer experience and improve the productivity of store associates.

A big challenge faced by brick and mortar stores today is identifying and engaging a high potential shopper needing assistance to make a purchase decision, among a crowd of shoppers. Flooresense helps retailers identify real-time sales floor opportunities to enhance shopper experience and optimize sales time.

The cloud-based platform which runs on Microsoft Azure, offers intelligent recommendations that connect the right store associate with high potential shoppers needing assistance. The solution identifies and prioritizes potential shoppers using video feeds and custom algorithms while maintaining shopper anonymity.

Gaurav Johri, Senior Vice President and Head, Platforms & Solutions Group said

Over 80% of retail sales still take place in brick and mortar stores, especially for complex purchase decisions. Solutions that improve shopper conversion in stores can have an outsize impact on retailers’ revenues. Store associates are a retailer’s primary brand ambassadors and Flooresense equips them with relevant information to provide a superior customer experience leading to increased conversions.

Brendan O’Meara, managing director, Worldwide Retail and Consumer Goods at Microsoft said

Modern retail chains can use platforms leveraging technologies like cloud, mobile and video analytics to empower their employees and power their business. The combination of Flooresense purchase-intent learning algorithms and a collection of Azure integrated services allows retailers to deliver a great customer experience with flexibility and scale across their entire store network.

The solution requires low investment from retailers, as it utilizes the stores’ existing infrastructure such as video surveillance to sense the floor and is easily deployed on corporate networks. It requires minimal integration with store systems, making it a fast and affordable choice for improving in-store conversions.

More about Flooresense can be found here

About Mindtree

Mindtree delivers digital transformation and technology services from ideation to execution, enabling Global 2000 clients to outperform the competition. “Born digital,” Mindtree takes an agile, collaborative approach to creating customized solutions across the digital value chain.